Microsoft's Monica French speaks with Jay McBain of Canalys (left) and Robert DeMarzo of Channel Parnters (right)

The 2025 MSP 501 Preferred Vendor awards show just how important Microsoft is to top MSPs. When we asked the MSP 501 companies who their most trusted vendors are, Microsoft was named the most in four of the nine preferred vendor categories.

At the MSP Summit this month, Microsoft’s USA SMB director Monica French sat for a keynote interview to discuss reasons Microsoft does so well with MSPs. She said SMBs are one of Microsoft’s highest growth segments, and MSPs help unlock that market for Microsoft.

French pointed out that Microsoft’s SMB revenue last quarter outpaced the company’s overall 18% year-over-year growth.

“We're about eight million businesses in the U.S., a $250 billion TAM. I think it's such an exciting moment,” she said. “And by unlocking the partner ecosystem with all of you, we can better serve our customers. That is what excites me every day in my job.”

Investing to Simplify Tools for SMBs

Microsoft has invested heavily in key areas for SMBs, particularly in ways to integrate AI in MSP staples cybersecurity and cloud.

“The premise was, how can we shift towards understanding the customer more and simplify it for customer needs with AI embedded within those solution areas,” French said. “When we looked at AI business solutions, we say, ‘OK, we're going to bring D365 [Dynamics 365], Microsoft 365, and Copilot together.’ So we have that productivity suite end-to-end for the workforce. We had looked at security as being latched onto modern work. Now security’s its own pillar, because of how important security is in our day-to-day operations to create data governance and threat protection. And so security is fundamental for us as a solution area pillar.

“Cloud and AI platforms is the third area we just revamped … the infrastructure and tools to really create those AI apps and agents. We are unlocking huge investments within each of these three different solution area pillars that are SMB empowered through SMB designations and certifications, so that we can unlock different programs and investments.”

Microsoft in July launched Azure Accelerate, merging Azure Migrate and Modernize with Azure Innovate programs into one. The program streamlines cloud and AI adoption.

“Azure Accelerate is a huge program where we're putting in 70% more investment than last year, so that all of you can hopefully leverage those programs, get SMB designations and be able to serve and help our customers migrate and modernize their data,” French said.

MSPs Should ‘Walk the Walk’ on AI

She urged MSPs to become experts on AI and use it internally so they can better help their clients adopt it.

“We need to walk the walk ourselves,” French said. “The partners that are really enabling the adoption of AI successfully within their own customers are doing it themselves, they are embedding that within their own operations and they are unleashing agents.”

However, she reminded MSPs that introducing AI is not just a tech decision. It is also a human resources decision because members of their teams and their customers’ teams will be in different places on the adoption curve.

“We have to think of ourselves as tech ninjas implementing [AI] but we also need a humanistic factor because enablement and skill building is a huge factor,” French said. “We need to have those discussions with our SMBs about ‘how are you using AI right now?’ We're bringing tools into the company. We need to understand that because then we can have honest conversations of where each individual is in their adoption curve.”

She said MSPs must accommodate team members who are “Rambo on using all these tools” and can seamlessly shift to Copilot as well as those who are nervous about new technologies.

“We need to think about our communication to different stakeholders,” French said. “We need to be the AI change agents within the organizations, and know how to talk to different stakeholders, to the CMO and the CRO, up and down [the organization]. This is much more than just a tech talk. It's a communication style across the different stakeholders.”